Purple, Blue, Red oh my. It makes my Fusion Rifle kills banish to the realm of nothing in pretty colors! But like some games, does this elemental damage have some additional effect, like a slow or poison? No they do not. Which is not entirely clear like most things in Destiny. So what is it good for? Enemy Shields! You may have encountered one of these already. Dumping a 72 mag auto rifle into a Wizard, who is glowing Red like something is partially blocking your bullets. You may have even noticed the Wizard has a white bar on top of his red health bar, much like Guardians have and noticeable in PvP. That is right, some enemies have the same Darkness/Traveler voodoo magic that Guardians have, the fast regenerating... Shield. Like Guardians, enemy shields regenerate quickly after 5 seconds or so after avoiding Guardian fire. The one big difference is enemy Shields are weak to 1 of the 3 elemental damage types while resisting Kinetic (most Primary Weapons) and the other 2 elements. On some Strike/Mission modifiers, the shields will 90% (estimate) resist Primary fire. You can tell when your current weapon is not strong against a shield when Resist or Immune popup messages appear instead of your damage numbers. Sure your Primary Weapon will eventually eat through the shield, but if you let it regenerate, you have to take it out again. In the harder modes it is near essential for the Fireteam to coordinate element types and when someone is dropping the shields on a Ultra/Major (High HP, yellow health bar) enemies. [b]Shield Colors:[/b] Red = Weak to Solar Blue = Weak to Arc Purple = Weak to Void [b]Mission/Strike modifiers:[/b] Normal - Wizards, Centurions, not sure what else has shields, but not many do and they are rather weak. Heroic - Shields resist Kinetic (non-elemental Primary) and the 2 other elementals Epic - Shields resist Kinetic + 2 other elements more or are near immune (only seen Immune in the Epic Thorn Strike) [u][b]Enemy Shield List[/b][/u] [b]By Element[/b] [spoiler][b]Solar[/b] Cabal Centurions Fallen Shanks - Fire (only on epic I think) Hive Wizards [b]Void[/b] Vex Minotaurs Cabal Psions (only on Epic I think) [b]Arc[/b] Vex Harpy (only on Epic I think) Fallen Captains Hive Knights [/spoiler] [b]By Race[/b] [spoiler][b]Fallen[/b] Captain - Arc Shank - Fire (epic [b]Hive [/b] Knight - Arc Wizard - Solar [b]Vex[/b] Minotaur - Void Harpy - Arc (epic) [b]Cabal[/b] Centurion - Solar Psion - Void (epic) [/spoiler] Aim to have a well rounded arsenal that includes all 3 elements for your Special and Heavy Weapons. If you do Vault of Glass, there is Primary Weapons that have Elemental damage. Solar Scout Rifle, Void Auto Rifle, Arc (Hand Cannon or Pulse, have not seen them yet). There is the special case during Void/Arc/Solar Burn modifiers where those elements do bonus damage. The bonus damage sometimes allows that element to eat a shield that it is not strong against. Test it out and see how well it works for yourself. (I can not remember if Colossus or HobGoblins ever get shields. Or if I missed anything else.)